Suspected "Harry" Heisters in Custody

Apparently, it wasn't Voldemort behind the great Harry Potter book heist.

Just days after two unbound, advance copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (not due in book stores until June 21) were found in a field in eastern England, British officials have four suspects in custody.

The four offending (and unidentified) Muggles, two 16-year-olds, an 18-year-old and a 44-year-old, were detained after raids in Suffolk, England. The quartet is being held on suspicion of theft and attempting to obtain property by deception. Suffolk officials said the men are currently being questioned at a local police station.

An investigation was launched Tuesday by the police and the book's publisher after a Suffolk man found the copies in a field near Printer Clays Ltd.--the plant where hundreds of thousands of copies of the book are being pumped out daily--and handed them over to the local newspaper. At the time, foul play was suspected, and Bloomsbury Publishing officials were hoping to conjure up a quick solution to the mystery.

"The matter is currently under investigation, with the suspicion that theft is involved," the publisher and J.K. Rowling's agent said in a joint statement Monday.

For now, details remain cloaked in intrigue--Bloomsbury and the printer have declined to comment on specifics. But a universal sigh of relief is likely being heard in the U.K., considering the potential damage early copies of the book could do to sales if it leaked out to, say, the Internet.

Already, the book's distributors are concerned. Tessa Vanderkop, publicity manager for Raincoast, the book's Canadian publisher, told the Toronto Star that she fears the theft might encourage other to seek out the printing facility in hopes of scoring early copies. "It's unfortunate in a project this big, especially when there is so much secrecy around it, that it just increases the desire on the part of people to be able to get at that kind of property," she said.

To address the problem, Rowling & Co. have taken swift legal action to avoid any book-revelation plots from brewing, whether from the suspected thieves or anyone else.

The author and Bloomsbury Publishing obtained a restraining order Thursday against the prepublication sale of Order of the Phoenix and also obtained a legal order that all copies of the book be returned.

According to court documents, a "shifty sounding man" (who has yet to be abducted by the authorities) tried to sell various chapters of the book to the Sun newspaper in Suffolk and London's Daily Mail. Rowling's lawyers have dubbed the character "John Doe" and have restrained whoever this person (maybe Voldemort, after all?) might be from "from disclosing either the text or any of the contents" of the book.

It also puts the kibosh on any "shady" moves from his associates, outlawing "those with knowledge of the terms of the Order from assisting 'John Doe' in breaching the terms of the Order made against him," Rowling and Bloomsbury said in a statement.

Indeed, the swift response to the book-napping is understandable. Phoenix is guaranteed to be a sales juggernaut, already dominating bestseller lists on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

And if the response to the first four Harry books is any indication, Phoenix will be huge. More than 200 million copies of the first four novels in the series about the intrepid boy wizard and his pals--Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire--have been snapped up by fans, breaking book sales records everywhere. The movies based on the first two books have been hugely successful, as well. The first film grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, and the second has made nearly $800 million.

Next up for the franchise is the third installment of the movie series. Filming is now underway under the direction of Alfonso Cuar&ocacute;n, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban will be released in 2004.